Pearson Should Sell the Financial Times

On what the news stories all insist on calling the "sidelines" of the Future of Business Media conference I had a very interesting conversation with Ien Cheng, the publisher of FT.com. I told him he should start blogging; he told me that everything he said was off the record. So much for transparency.

In order to get some on-the-record commentary about the FT, then, I asked a panel of dealmakers about the Financial Times and whether it really belongs as a part of Pearson. Steven Rattner kicked off by saying that there are three global English-language business newspapers: the WSJ, the FT, and the International Herald Tribune. Three's too many, he said, implying that eventually there will be only two. That would either happen through acquisition – the FT did actually look at making a bid for the WSJ, but decided the price was too high – or else it will happen through attrition, if the NYT can't find a way of making the IHT profitable.

Then Lauren Rich Fine stepped in, and said that "something has to happen with the FT." While Pearson owns a lot of very good properties, she says, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. And while I can't tell you what Cheng told me, I can tell you what he didn't say, which is (a) that Pearson has deep pockets and is willing to make a substantial investment in the FT; or that (b) the FT gets much if any benefit from being part of the Pearson stable.

My view is known: that Pearson should sell the FT to Thomson-Reuters. But I don't think I'll be giving away any secrets if I say that Cheng is decidedly bullish on the future of the FT as an independent entity.